not every sun can bravely shine
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [Next] Deep inside, they wage war with the world and with themselves. They dive into battles with their weapons: access, distance, moving ever forward or staying back - but they're all right and they're all wrong. Humans were all about balance after all.


**A/N:** Written for:

The Epic Masterclass Challenge, #3 – remix tapes  
Diversity Writing Challenge, m18 - destiny/role swap, ie. different characters take on canon assigned roles

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 **not every sun can bravely shine**

 _Chapter 1  
once upon a time_

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Once upon a time he'd loved Tsurugi. Now he just hated him. Watching him play soccer with the other boys: boys that didn't have the weight of responsibility or their own incapable bodies on their back and Tsurugi had both of those. Foolish Tsurugi, who also ignored them both and threw himself into a wasteful game with reckless abandon. Like a simple soccer game was worth shaving a few months off his life. Like a simple soccer game was worth the time he could have been looking for his friend and neighbour instead.

He wasn't as close to Ami as Tsurugi was, and neither was as close as Inui Yuu but when was even the last time they'd seen Inui Yuu? It angered him. Didn't seem to bother Tsurugi though. Nothing seemed to bother Tsurugi at all. That foolish boy, and he'd promised to look out for the overgrown child who wouldn't do it himself.

And it was an impossible task. Too impossible of a task, to the extent where he'd stopped arguing with the boy and simply watched from the shadows nearby with a finger on speed-dial. And not even that, sometimes. There were plenty of other people who could watch out for Tsurugi. Far less that could watch out for Ami. Just the two of them and Yuu and Norun – and Norun was the only one out looking, right then. Poor Ami, to have even most of her friends occupied with other matters.

His teeth clenched as his mother's voice echoed in his mind. The same lecture, as always. 'Your friend's been missing for years. Get over it.' Just laced with kindness, enough so the excess honey dripped all over his shoes and the wooden floor and leaves ugly blotches even after he'd mopped it clean. But he couldn't get over it. And he wasn't even the one close to her. No, closest was Norun. Tsurugi had owned that spot, once upon a time. But not anymore. Not the boy who lived life with a reckless abandon, knowing he was wasting it, and wasting someone else's time as well: his, and Ami's as well.

Tsurugi faltered on the field. Stumbled. Fell to his knees and waved off the player who stumbled to a halt in front of him. _Idiot._ Got back up. Played a few more minutes and fell again, and this time someone had enough sense to haul him up by the arm and drag him to a bench and force a few mouthfuls down his throat.

Everything was under control. Shou went back to the main screen on his phone and texted Norun instead. _Anything?_

 _Nothing_ , was the short, expected, response.

His eyes flickered back to Tsurugi, with someone sitting beside him to stop him springing into the game again. He wasn't needed anymore. So he left, heading for home and his computer where he could continue his search in the real world – because it was either that or follow Tsurugi like an unappreciated shadow, and he hated both that stupidly bright boy and the shadow.

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Once upon a time, Norun had been lost in the crowd. She'd come to the human world and understood nothing, but then the crowd swept her up and she let herself float away.

And that turned out to be okay, because someone grabbed her hand in the crowd and they stuck together. Those few people who stuck out, who she noticed. That kind brown haired girl fussing over a bright brown haired boy. And a far younger boy with a hat clutching the girl from behind. And a boy with yellow hair and an odd expression, watching the other three but holding her hand anyway.

She didn't know what had made him grab her like that, but she was glad he had. The world shrunk, from thousands of people she couldn't even begin to understand, down to four she could. And she tried. She learnt what a friend was and became their friend. Learned other things as well: how to get by in this odd world, and how to live.

And then Ami disappeared: Ami who taught her to be kind, to see the good in everyone, to not fight over everyone and everything because they were humans and their hearts were bigger than their primal animalistic instincts. She was sure she knew where Ami was…except three years later, Ami was still missing.

Somewhere along the line, she'd confessed that searching in the human world was likely a futile thing. Just to Shou, because Shou was the one who'd kept an extra sharp eye on her, who'd tugged her out of the crowd that day and showed her the others. And Shou explained otherwise. Showed her reports. Statistics. Of how people vanished all the time and a good number of them never showed up again. Just because another world existed, it didn't mean she was in it. But the possibility was still there. The scope of the search had simply expanded.

She was surprised he didn't react more to the knowledge of the digital world. Perhaps there was something she'd missed. But they'd hashed out a new battle-plan. Or tried to. Around the same time, they lost contact with little Inui Yuu. Yuu who'd been hit the hardest by Ami's disappearance. All that was left was Tsurugi, and at that point another change had come as well. Shou's expression had darkened at the name and he'd muttered something about unreliability, and they decided to search through the digital world on their own.

They searched the real world as well, as best they could and their best was pathetic, they knew. Children could only cover so much ground. Maybe they spent more time searching the digital world now because they _could_ : because it was so big and they could gain access to all of it. As far as Tsurugi knew, they were searching for Ami in the real world. As far as Tsurugi knew, they barely hooked up to the digital world terminal that most people their age were obsessed with. He barely hooked up himself. Had a Greymon he occasionally fought with and that was it. Wasn't interested in the virtual world, he said, when there was still too much of the real world he hadn't experienced. And he'd sounded so uncharacteristically bitter that Norun had never brought it up again, even to tell him it wasn't a virtual world at all.

Well…she and Shou could handle the terminal together, she supposed. Though it was just her for a while. School holidays meant Tsurugi had more time to, as Shou put it, get into trouble, and the other boy was keeping an eye on him just like Ami used to. Sometimes she felt he shouldn't. He didn't enjoy it. It was twisting him. But she brushed that aside as just another thing she was still learning about humans, and the human world.

Life in the Terminal was far simpler. The digimon that were treated well were obvious, and the ones that weren't were obvious as well. She had to fight to progress, but she could choose her battles and she chose to purge those that didn't deserve such a wonderful world. She knew the general way things stood, knew the digital world was simpler, far simpler, than the human world but the stains of the human world could so easily creep into the digital one. This was her way of playing gatekeeper for her world, as well as searching for Ami. Her way of showing that humans could be and were good people worthy of contact with that other world, but weeding out the ones that weren't.

And now it was another battle. Once upon a time, she hadn't understood what attracted humans to needless violence. Now, she sought to put a stopper on it.

But her phone buzzed before she could begin, and she lifted her hand from the keypad to look over the message. Shou's. Asking if she'd found anything.

 _Nothing_ , she replied, and then returned to the terminal. Nothing yet – but she was going to plow on through and access more of the world that was closed to her from this end.

And, hopefully, that would be enough to find her.

But she had to admit to herself, there were more selfish reasons she sat at the terminal day in and out.

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Once upon a time, Tsurugi had been able to play with his friends without the weight of his body dragging him down. Now, his heart thudded painfully in his chest and there was an ocean in his ears, and a firm hand on his arm to stop him trying to stand up again and that just wasn't fair.

He drained the rest of his bottle, and tried unsuccessfully once again to rid himself of his newly acquired bodyguard. It didn't work, so he resigned himself to watching the game instead. It wasn't fair. And when he was still, his legs and arms and body itched to move, itched to join in with the rest of the crowd.

It frustrated others. He knew it did. Frustrated his parents. Frustrated Shou. Frustrated Ami a bit as well but she'd gotten it, understood he needed to keep moving, keep living. Understood he couldn't just curl up and wait to die, even if there was a fair chance he wouldn't die. He just wasn't that kind of person.

He knew Shou hated how he always smiled, as well. But he had to do that too. Smile bright. Live his life. Keep on moving forward until there wasn't any road left under his feet. He just _had_ to. If he didn't, he felt he'd fall into a hole so deep, he wouldn't be able to claw himself out again. But it was hurting everyone around him, that selfish need of his. Hurting those close friends that weren't so close anymore – and when had they gotten so close to begin with?

Because of Norun, he recalled. That strange girl who'd known nothing about the world and they'd taught her. Showed her. He still saw her pretty regularly. Played soccer occasionally, or went on one of those hikes the adventure club set up. She never repeated the same place twice, though. And other days he'd take the train or a bus around and see if he could catch a glimpse of that brown haired girl in pigtails that had vanished three years ago.

It was foolish to wander around with no aim, but what else could he do? The police were looking in other ways but this was his: be a bright beacon and hope that Ami would look up and see him, and find her way home. Because there were far too many girls with brown hair and he chased as many as he could and some multiple times (and _Kami_ those ones had wound up behind weirded out by him and he couldn't blame them, could he?) but there were too many and Ami was still nowhere to be found.

Part of him knew it was pretty hopeless. People who thought he was as optimistic as the sun had it all wrong, but he had to hold himself up there. Didn't want to fall into that pool of despair so he kept moving, kept searching, kept hoping because there was nothing else he could do. There was a bubble of fear in his chest that would burst like a poison-containing pustule if he let it, and he couldn't let it. So he only took each day as it came, each hour as it came, each adventure in life as it came –

He should his head. There, his thoughts were already spiralling. He needed to move again, even though his chest was heart was still racing and his breathing much too fast and his vision a little blurry. But sometimes he couldn't push his way out – so he'd talk instead. Or listen to a story if he couldn't do that.

He wished the others would pick up their phones. Norun did, sometimes. Shou even more rarely. And Yuu…nearly three years for him too. Almost as long as since they'd last seen Ami…

None of them were there. Other people, other friends were, and he put a grin on his face and turned to the guy next to him, trying to play the part of good Samaritan and not realising how urgently to move or just even _think_ about something else. 'So what do you think of the new teacher?'

Play. Gossip. Appear careless but he wasn't careless. He wasn't free. Not at all.

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Once upon a time, he had lots of friends and a big sister.

Though Ami wasn't related to him by blood. She still looked out for him like one. Met him when he was small and hid behind his mother's skirt, and let him hide behind hers instead. And led him around and showed him lots of things and held his hand and petted his head when things got scary. She was just like his mother in a way, but smaller and easier to see the whole of.

And so they grew up, side by side. And then Ami brought more people into the group. Tsurugi, who had a heart condition but insisted on filling himself to the brim with life anyway. Then Shou, who was quiet and serious and responsible but, above all else, protective and loyal. Reminded him of his father, actually. He thought Shou would make a good police officer like him too, one day. And then Shou brought Norun: that girl they led around like they led him around, and he got to teach her things as well. That had been fun, but frightening. So often he could have said the wrong thing, given her the impression of the wrong thing but the others were always there to help, and it was kind of fun. All part of growing up, Ami'd laughed.

But then, suddenly, Ami was gone and everything fell apart.

The world was frightening. He was small, weak, and younger than the rest of their friends. And Shou and Tsurugi would argue so terribly and it frightened him. So he hid himself away. Stopped going to meet them. Stopped talking to them. Tried to look for Ami a little on his own, but gave up on it because he was just a weak little kid and his father was on the case anyway. What could he do that a great policeman like his father couldn't? In the real world, he could barely move.

But then his father brought home a Terminal, and there was a whole other world. A world where he could become stronger, like he couldn't in this world. Where it wasn't him that got beat down if he fell. Where it was him that grew more confident, and more powerful. And where his avatar, his other self, came back to life even when the little device that housed him was crushed underfoot.

And the world promised that, if he became strong enough, they'd give her back as well.


End file.
